Americans Mix Politics and Religion, Dulling Line between Church-State

Robert Marquand, writer of The Christian Science Monitor, The Christian Science Monitor

For more than a decade, conservative Christians have been making
political inroads in the US - capturing seats in local school
boards and influencing national elections with strong views on
social issues ranging from abortion to gay rights.

Nor are they about to disappear. Today, if anything, both the
intensity of conservative values and the number of politically
involved Christians are rising.

These trends have contributed to a sweeping change in American
society, according to a pathbreaking study released Tuesday. A
majority of adults in the United States now believe that churches
should be able to express political views - an attitude that is
already changing the longstanding separation between church and
state.

"There is a lot of religion in politics and politics in
religion these days," says Andrew Kohut, who led the study by the
Pew Research Center. "And there is more acceptance of it than 30
years ago."

The increase of white Evangelical Protestants is of particular
political significance. Some experts refer to the phenomenon as the
political mainstreaming of white Evangelicals. These individuals,
many of whom eschew traditional "old-line" denominations like
Methodist or Episcopal, represent 24 percent of all registered
voters. That is up from 19 percent in 1987, the study finds.

"The people who do hard-core day-to-day politics in Washington
have never looked in a detailed way about how the votes {of
Evangelicals} stack up," notes Maureen Steinbruner, president of
the Center for National Policy, a nonpartisan Washington political
study group that oversaw the survey. "Now they are."

The intensity of conservative religious values among these
Evangelicals is driving the change. "The conservatism of white
Evangelical Protestants is clearly the most powerful force in
politics today," said the study, "The Diminishing Divide ...
American Churches, American Politics." "There is little indication
of a coherent pattern of liberal belief associated with any major
... religious group."

In a shift, 54 percent of Americans now say churches and clergy
members should "express their views on day-to-day social and
political questions." Thirty years ago, in a Gallop Poll, 53
percent of Americans said politics and religion should remain
separate. …

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